The viability of treating higher excitations in coupled-cluster theory is discussed. An algorithm is presented for solving coupled-cluster (CC) equations which can handle any excitation. Our method combines the formalism of diagrammatic many-body perturbation theory and string-based configuration interaction (CI). CC equations are explicitly put down in terms of antisymmetrized diagrams and a general method is proposed for the factorization of the corresponding algebraic expressions. Contractions between cluster amplitudes and intermediates are evaluated by a string-based algorithm. In contrast to our previous developments [J. Chem. Phys. 113, 1359 (2000)] the operation count of this new method scales roughly as the (2n+2)nd power of the basis set size where n is the highest excitation in the cluster operator. As a by-product we get a completely new CI formalism which is effective for solving both truncated and full CI problems. Generalization for approximate CC models as well as multireference cases is also discussed.